Intel Pentium G850 Sandy Bridge 2.9GHz CPU Review

Intel Pentium G850 Temperature Testing

It’s tough to do temperature testing in the summer since we don’t have a thermo chamber, but the least we can do is show you the temperature numbers we saw on the Intel Pentium G850 as we tested it.

For testing Intel CPUs we use the Intel BXXTS100H CPU cooler on all of our Intel LGA1155 processors to keep the test system power numbers consistent no matter what CPU we are using. This CPU cooler is rated for up to 95W TDP processors and retails for $42.99 plus $2.99 shipping from Newegg. It comes selectable fan speeds of quiet and performance mode settings and it should be noted that we tested in performance mode.

The ambient air temperature in the room was 77F or 25C. The Gigabyte EasyTune6 software showed that our CPU had a temperature of 23C at idle. This is a bit odd as it was below the room temperature, but remember CPU voltage is derived from the voltages inside the processor, so things are always a bit funky with temperatures.

To get load temperatures we fired up Prime 95 and ran the torture test for half an hour. We used the “In-place large FFTs” test, which we feel is the best test to run for heating up processors. The CPU quickly topped out at 37C and bounced around 35-37C for the entire test period.

We wanted to see if we could get it any hotter, so we figured we could load the GPU up to 100% load just like we had the CPU load at 100%. In order to do this we left Prime 95 running and fired up Furmark 1.9.1 and ran it on the GPU. By doing this we were able to heat up the processor even more and we got the Intel Pentium G850 to hit 39C under full load. This is not a bad temperature at all for full load speeds!

At the end of the day the Intel Pentium G850 had an idle temperature of 23C and a load temperature of 39C. This is a rise of just 16C from idle to load!